CultureLab pans for gold in 2014 reads

Here is our preview of the coming crop for lovers of good books and fine ideas

Neanderthal Man: In search of lost genomes by Svante Pääbo, Basic Books

Our Neanderthal cousins are big news again. Will the recent discovery of a 400,000-year-old human genome, the oldest so far, bring us closer to understanding our common ancestor? We're hoping for great things from geneticist Svante Pääbo, who in 2009 led the team that sequenced the first Neanderthal genome using DNA from 40,000-year-old bone. This is his story, which should prove to be a lens not only on pioneering scientific discovery but also on what makes us human.

The Future of the Mind: The scientific quest to understand, enhance and empower the mind by Michio Kaku, Allen Lane/Doubleday

In his last book, Physics of the Future, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku predicted how technology will shape our world in the next 100 years. So we're keen to see what happens when the irrepressibly optimistic Kaku turns his crystal ball to brain science and the future of human minds. His new book spans everything from smart pills that enhance cognition to placing our neural blueprint on laser beams sent out into space.

Why is mathematics so good at describing the cosmos? Perhaps because our physical world is indeed in some sense actually mathematical? Max Tegmark, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, opens up a deep and daring strand of thinking in this esoteric world.

The Cosmic Cocktail: Three parts dark matter by Katherine Freese, Princeton University Press

A pioneer in the hunt for dark matter, astrophysicist Katherine Freese tackles the quest to solve one of the great mysteries of the universe: what is it made of? This book sounds like a good mix of history and primer for all who care about matter.

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts by Stanislas Dehaene, Viking

Consciousness tomes have become a dime a dozen over the past decade or so, with every last researcher feeling the need to join the fray. But Stanislas Dehaene is one of the few at the top of the disciplines involved – philosophy, history, cognitive psychology, brain imaging, computer modelling – to add something new. Hopes are high...

The Galapagos: A natural history by Henry Nicholls, Profile/Basic Books

The tale of the Galapagos's solitary giant tortoise and conservation icon was told to great effect by Henry Nicholls in Lonesome George. Sadly, George died in 2012, but happily Nicholls is back with an account that shows why the archipelago that shaped Darwin's ideas still matters to us.

Sonic Wonderland: A scientific odyssey of sound (US: The Sound Book: The science of the sonic wonders of the world) by Trevor Cox, Bodley Head/W. W. Norton

Snapping shrimps, musical roads, reverberating sewers, creaking glaciers and droning dunes. This is acoustician Trevor Cox's fun but thoroughly detailed scientific tour through some of the world's aural gems. Sounds like music to our ears.

The Improbability Principle: Why coincidences, miracles, and rare events happen every day by David J. Hand, Bantam/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

How do you explain why someone wins the lottery many times, or why lightning strikes the same man repeatedly? Statistician David Hand is an emeritus mathematics professor from Imperial College London, former president of the Royal Statistical Society, and chief scientific adviser to an algorithmic hedge fund. That makes him well qualified to argue that extremely improbable events are commonplace, the inevitable consequence of laws underlying "chance" that we could take advantage of. Is this a comfort after Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan?

A Natural History of Human Thinking by Michael Tomasello, Harvard University Press

What is it that differentiates humans from other animals? It's the question that keeps evolutionary anthropologists like Michael Tomasello up nights. But after 20-plus years wrestling with the thorny subject, he puts forward his "shared intentionality hypothesis", designed to account for how early humans learned to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborators.

Dystopian visions about machine brains supplanting human ones have been the stuff of Terminator-style movies for decades. But what is the reality? Will extreme intelligence, or superintelligence as philosopher Nick Bostrom calls it, really win out? It could be the last question we ever ask.

This article appeared in print under the headline "A year in books"

Correction:When this article was first published on 7 January 2014, it gave the wrong subtitle for Superintelligence, and misspelled Nick Bostrom's name

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.